"If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there."
- Lewis Carroll
-. Wait For It .-
Chapter XI: Missing a Piece
She was frightfully aware of how cliché her reaction was, but decided to go through with it anyway. If only to make a point. If only because she needed the resulting numbness.
Standing alone in the shower stall, just a little before midnight, Tifa turned the cold knob as far as it could, instantly dousing herself in a torrent of glacial water. It hurt of course. She had expected it to. But at least it served its purpose of a distraction. At least she was currently thinking of nothing else but the biting chill now saturating both skin and bones.
That is until a knock sounded at the door.
"Tifa?" he asked timidly, even though he knew perfectly well that there was currently no one else was in the house. And no one else, especially, who would be in this room at this hour doing what she was doing.
Tifa would have scoffed if her chatting teeth had allowed her to. But instead she ignored the summons, and concentrated on the effects of the icy stream turning every inch of skin it touched into a bright shade of pink.
"Tifa..." A sigh followed by a thump on the door, indicating the hitting of a heavy head against it. "I think you're over reacting."
Many hilarious retorts could not help but bob to the surface of her mind then, despite the lack of desire or ability to voice them. The fact that he was so stoic that his chosen response to any equivalent emotional backstabbing would probably have been a blink. Or, if really biting, then maybe a frown. Or, better yet, a sigh. Him and those damn lengthy sighs. As if they expressed anything besides an infantile reluctance to communicate.
"Tifa," he tried again after a full minute of no response, his tone insistent. "Talk to me."
She shook her head, hoping he somehow sensed the gesture through both the stall and bathroom door.
"Please," he whispered as a final appeal, barely audible over the rush of water. "Please, just...I can't go knowing you're angry."
"Then don't leave!" The plea was released involuntarily, her voice a loud, retching sob that echoed off the ceramic tiles.
The shower was no longer of any use after that, overwhelmed as her mind was by an untamable flood of hurt and betrayal.
Just as she reached forward to turn it off, the unmistakable click of the lock releasing resonated within the miniscule space, followed by Cloud casually walking in. Beyond the frosted glass she watched him, awestruck by this rare act of invasion, as he leaned back against the sink, folded his arms and angled his head toward the floor. Waiting. Always the gentleman despite having long since passed the point of it being necessary.
Finding no choice other than remaining where she was and eventually dying of hypothermia, she completed her mid-way gesture of shutting off the water, instantly flooding the room with a palpable silence. Cloud remained unnaturally still beyond the glass, even as she pushed the door open and took her time in finding and wrapping her towel around herself. His eyes remained glued to floor.
Ignoring his placement in the most inconvenient of spots, Tifa reached around for her toiletries and proceeded to brush her teeth in silence. Doing her best to ignore the piercing eyes that were following her every move now that she was decent.
Afterwards, he noiselessly tracked her out into the hall and back into her candle-lit bedroom, blue rose petals crushed to oblivion beneath his booted feet, up until she was seated in the stool before her dresser. Once settled, with a hair-brush brandished like a weapon, she began yanking through her tangles with a needless amount of hostility, hoping it would serve as a new distraction.
It wasn't nearly enough of course. Especially in this setting.
"Maybe..." she began, watching through the mirror's reflection as he took a seat at the edge of her bed. His full figure, dressed in dark and heavy travelling attire, clashed horribly with the rest of the room's suggested silkiness. "Maybe if you just told me where you were going or-or even how long-"
"I told you. I can't." he interrupted. His reflected expression was as apathetic as she had ever seen it, reminding her horrifyingly of those days just a few months ago. Right before he had disappeared to live on the cold stone floor of a church.
"How about why then? Hmm? Can I at least get-"
"Tifa. No. I don't want to talk about it. I can't talk about it. Just..." he pressed his lips together, obviously frustrated. "Just trust me. After everything that's happened. All I'm asking is that you trust me."
It took all of Tifa's willpower to avoid manically laughing. But she luckily still had enough of her wits about her to factor the preferred bitter exclamations into simple, hard facts. "You don't have the best track record for trust Cloud."
"I'm not exactly slinking away into the night with no warning Tifa," he pointed out sourly. "This is my home. Our home. I'm going away, but I'm not leaving. This is just something I have to do. Okay?"
"And if I insist that you don't?" she spat, swiveling her chair around so that she could glare directly into his eyes. "You do remember that our adoption interview is in only two days, right? I-I can't...you can't expect me to-"
"I told you. I took care of that. My absence will in no way affect the final decision."
"What if I tell you that I can't handle being partnered with someone who disappears and can't even tell me why or where or for how long? What if I tell you that you are not welcome back if you walk out that door tonight?"
Cloud sighed while pushing his palms into his eye sockets. It was quite possibly the worst response he could have given. Him and that damn sigh. Expecting it, as always, to be a magical conclusion to any serious discussion not going his way. As if blind acceptance was ever an option in such arguments.
She wanted to explode into a rage. She wanted to punch him, not enough to cause any actual serious injury, but maybe enough to knock out a few teeth. She wanted to tie him to a chair and bring the kids back over from Barret's, forcing him to explain to their pained faces that he was leaving them again and wouldn't provide any other information besides "trust me". If she was considered to be over reacting, what would he tell them when they fell to their knees in desperate crying, dreams of a complete family crumbling before their very eyes? How would he handle it then?
Would he simply sigh? Gaia-damn-him, he probably would.
As if to test the theory, she felt a similar outburst suddenly begin to swell within her chest. And without any warning, without one second the attempt suppressing it, Tifa soon found herself on her knees, on the floor, weeping so fiercely that she couldn't breathe. Something she hadn't done since her mother died. Something she had promised herself she would never do again, especially in front of anyone. Especially due to him.
"Tifa..." He closed the distance between them in two long strides, instantly bringing her into his arms. She tried to struggle, to break the embrace, but it was impossible to find the energy in between gasping breaths. "I'm coming back," he murmured, solidifying the assertion with a kiss to her hair, hoping to somehow make it stick. "I will come back. You, Marlene and Denzel are...you're everything. I'm coming back. I promise."
This only made her cry harder, completely baffled as to how he could say such sweet things without trusting her enough to either reveal this trip's purpose or take her threat of not being welcome back seriously. But try as she might, no words to convey these matters were able to force their way out between the sobs. She had no choice but to listen as he continued to pry open the cracks in her heart.
"I can't tell you how long because I don't know. And I can't tell you where because I don't know that either. And the why?" he forced her head up off his shoulder in order to look at him, but she was made blind by a sheen of tears so thick that his expression was rendered unreadable. "In simple terms…it's because I'm afraid. And I don't want to be. I can't be anymore. But I am coming back. I'm coming back to you, no matter what. And that's all you need to know."
Once more, he kissed her hair, praying that his words somehow found purchase.
And then, just as quickly as he had entered her life, Cloud was gone.
Again.
If only she had known how the evening would pan out, Tifa could have saved herself a lot of time. And gil. And embarrassment for that matter.
For earlier that Sunday, she had been spurred into a rather disturbing plan. A devious plot involving candlelight and roses that had, of course, been founded by a certain meddlesome ninja. A ninja who, on that specific morning, wasn't in the best of positions to be giving anyone advice.
"Yuffie. Get up." Tifa prodded the unconscious figure lounging on top of the counter with one of the many broken stool legs scattered around her once impeccable 7th Heaven. The younger girl only groaned and mumbled a weak "stop etsss..." before rolling over and off onto the floor where she, miraculously, remained asleep.
Tifa rolled her eyes to the heavens and cursed her inability to say no to a certain blonde male who was still peacefully asleep upstairs.
"Yuffie's proven responsible enough," the bar-owner muttered, repeating the words that got her into this mess as she tiptoed through the wreckage in order to reach the bar gate. "Let her run the bar on the weekends. We can be with the kids all day. We can sleep in. Pft. Idiot. Yuffie!"
Having arrived behind the bar, Tifa was horrified to see that almost every one of her liquor bottles were empty and left rolling around the floor. Not only that, but the coffee machine was spewing black sludge in a growing pool up on the highest back shelf, her six dish bins were piled waist high dirty glasses and what she could only assume were the remnants of the couch pillows led to a sink filled with sopping feathers.
"Yuffie!" she yelled again, this time while yanking the girl to her feet. "What the hell did you do to my bar?"
"Dude...shhhh..." the girl insisted, eyes still closed "I told you I'd get you a drink after my nap...relaxxxx..."
Considering that slapping employees was probably frowned upon thanks to the WROs new union policies, Tifa instead decided on a gentler though no less effective technique. After positioning her ex-friend half slumped against the back wall, she went back to the kitchen and returned with an ice-cold glass of water. One which was then casually upturned above the vandal's head.
Needless to say, Yuffie woke up.
"Geez! Was that REALLY necessary?" the ninja asked after recovering from her shock, using a dirty rag from the floor to mop her face. "Just because I'm a heavy sleeper doesn't mean I deserve to be tortured!"
"What happened last night?" Tifa asked, straight to the point.
"Oh man..." Yuffie winced, eyes remaining closed as if to avoid her surroundings. "I meant to clean up after...but things got a little crazy."
"Define this 'crazy' if you please. Tell me how it led to me having no usable stools or even product for that matter? And it better be good. It better be good enough to warrant the panic attack I'm about to have about getting this place back up to par before our adoption interview."
"Relax boss-lady," Yuffie said with an oddly heroic smirk. As if having flicked on a sobriety switch, she easily leapt to her feet and headed to the cash register with Tifa nervously in tow. After printing out the night's log, she spun around and slapped the paper onto the only dry section of the lengthy granite bar. "How's twenty-six thousand for 'good', huh?"
With furrowed eyebrows, Tifa snatched up the receipt it order to read it again. Then, just in case a gross miscalculation had occurred, she slid over to the register and punched in the code so that it popped open. Sure enough, the drawer was full of more cash that she ever seen in once place.
Twenty-six thousand gil. That was more than they usually made in a month. Words failed her as she mindlessly began digging her hands in; riveted by the way her fingers disappeared into the apparently bottomless abyss of gold coins.
The weight of it all felt intoxicating. As if she was bathing in champagne.
"Impressive, isn't it?"
Tifa face fell as she quickly shook her limbs and her mind free of their shiny bonds.
As astounding as the profits were, she had never been one to believe in trouble-free miracles. Especially in a town where the richest man was lucky if he owned a vehicle under ten years old. And, not to mention, especially when it involved a woman whose past employment resume comprised of the single entry 'petty thief'.
"Tell me how the night panned out," she asked with one hand dug into her hip, attempting to emulate severity once again. "And spare no details, please."
"Well," Yuffie easily hopped onto the bar and crossed her legs, suddenly all sugar and smiles. "You know those rowdy perverts you usually toss out of here every night? Turns out they're just lonely. Ya know the old sob story: still living with their parents, can't find the right girl, have way too much disposable income since they got hired on the WRO guardian force. A key factor. So when a new, cute, non-scary waitress arrives, they wanna buy her a few shots. Most of which she covertly spits into here." Yuffie kicked at an almost full bucket underneath the register, sloshing the murky brown contents within. It must have contained nearly a gallon of liquor.
"Said cute, cunning waitress gets them to buy bottle after bottle for their friends and their friend's friends. Until they're so peppy, that they're buying everybody's drinks at the bar! People on the street are attracted by the noise. They come in the start their own party. The cycle continues. Calls are made. Money is made. Waitress may get a little tipsy at the end of the night with some cute stragglers, maybe starts a rather brutal pillow fight and accidentally smashes a few stools, but figures she can make it up with her giant wad of tips. She tries to make some coffee in order to get the energy to clean up, but ends up passing out on the floor. And that, my dear friend, is what happened last night."
Tifa nodded, brows furrowed, her conscience struggling between being horrified at the den of sin her bar had apparently become and squealing with glee at how much money they had legitimately made. It had always been her policy to escort people out who had become just past tipsy on the scale of inebriation. Mainly due to the fact that she worked alone and couldn't contain any large-scale brawls, constantly concerned as she was for the peace and security of the children sleeping upstairs. Not to mention, in the past, if she had let them, most regulars had the ability to run up a tab they could never afford to pay off in a lifetime.
But now that there was an enforced minimum wage and money like this to be made as a result, well, that changed everything. They could hire some muscle to take care of any trouble-makers. They could expand the space and the restaurant's menu for during daylight hours. She could prep the food service while the kids were in school, then leave the night shift for a team of equally "talented" servers.
She, Cloud and the kids could move out of the city, maybe to that new residential development the WRO was currently building. Somewhere with a yard and a swing set and more than one bathroom. A real 7th Heaven, just for them.
"Thinking of hiring me full time, aren't ya?" Yuffie guessed with an annoyingly arrogant smirk. "I wouldn't blame you. This lithe Wutain lady has proven to be quite the gil-wrangler. I can check my schedule if you'd like? That is, if you agree to some of my itty-bitty demands."
And with that rather brute suggestion, Tifa suddenly and violently came crashing down to earth. Even if last night's rush wasn't a rare coincidence as she expected, hiring new staff, expanding the structure and moving the family were all very big deals. Ones that required months of preparation, both financial and logistical.
"How about this," she began, slamming the cash drawer shut with her hip so that she could fold her arms across her chest. "First things first: today you clean up this place and find replacements for everything you destroyed with gil from your own pocket. I give you one month of Friday and Saturday night trials and we'll see if you can somehow convince this city to regularly squander some of its hard earned cash and avoid making this big of a mess ever again. After that, I'll consider full-time. But nothing will be implemented until Cloud, the kids and I find a new place to live. I don't want them growing up above a never ending drunken hootenanny. Deal?"
Yuffie opened her mouth then closed it, tapping one finger against her lips as if deep in pensive thought. The waiting was just for show of course, for she had made more money in one night than a good week of painful and risky materia snatching had ever divulged. Not to mention the other priceless asset that this job came hand-in-hand with: information, gossip, rumors and so forth. Serving at 7th Heaven had the rare combination of satisfying both her youthful desire to live life and have fun (ie: purposefully ignore all her father's traditions), as well as secure her position as one of Reeve's most valuable spies. It would be idiotic to let such an opportunity slip due to greed.
Still, she figured there was no harm in asking. "What about my demands?"
Tifa's eyes narrowed, impressed at the girl's immunity to general courteousness. Usually, if you had just practically destroyed a place of business, one would tend to keep their head low for a while and be grateful for anything thrown their way besides a lawsuit. "You get one demand. If it's reasonable, I'll do what I can."
For this, Yuffie didn't have to think for long, as the crick in her neck was still stressing its importance. "I DESPERATELY need a proper place to crash here. The bar closes too late and my apartment is too far. Not to mention, if it's been a good night, I'll presumably not be that good at the walking thing."
"Ummm..." Eyes once again shifting toward the ceiling, Tifa considered the three other already tightly packed bodies residing up there. Having spent several nights with barely enough energy to get up the stairs after closing the bar, she sympathized with the girl's plight. Still, the fact remained: "We're kind of lacking space as it is." She shrugged, giving her employee a genuinely apologetic frown. "The best I can do is the couch in the living space off the kitchen. It's pretty comfortable. Better than the floor at least. Or the bar."
"Well, what about the cot in Cloud's office?" Yuffie asked, hopping off the counter and retrieving a clean rag from underneath. "If he preps his delivery schedule the night before, he can get straight to 'em in the morning while I can sleep off the bar's inevitable success in the privacy of my own space till noon if I want. No offense, but your kids are loud."
Talk about the pot calling the kettle, but that was far from the most upsetting part of Yuffie's suggestion. With a long breath, Tifa brought up her own rag from beneath the counter and helped mop the stick surface down, hoping that a bit of manual labor would lessen the sting of the coming confession.
"Cloud's still sleeping in there," she admitted, her voice strained despite every attempt at sounding normal. "So that won't work."
Yuffie's hand, in mid-wipe, froze. One could practically hear the cogs turning in her head, churning out a series of flabbergasted responses that were, one by one, being deemed as over-dramatic. And so she settled with a very polite "oh really?" as she continued her washing. Though the straightened back and tight lips proved how much effort it took.
Tifa smirked, grateful and amused.
"We're taking things slow," she soon found herself explaining, despite the inappropriate audience. Perhaps because they had never actually, out loud, discussed the set up, putting the facts together for an outside source gave it some comforting back story. "We've only been, officially, seeing each other for a few weeks. Less than a month really. Cloud's just being a traditionalist. He's...respectful."
"Uh-huh. Sure. Makes sense." Her tone was bordering on sarcastic, but still she refrained from following with any direct comments. And Tifa, for some unknown reason, felt slightly irritated at her for not voicing an opinion.
"I mean, everybody assumes that just because we've been living together for so long, that it'd be easy to jump into living together-together. But it's completely different. Officially sharing a private space, that's a big step."
Yuffie nodded earnestly, eyes always on the granite. "I agree."
"Good. Thanks. Nice to know...someone understands." Because she sure as Shiva didn't get it.
The two barmaids continued to clean up the room in a tense silence, the only interrupting noises being that of the running faucet, the tinkling of glasses being arranged or the scraping of stool remnants being tossed into a pile. While getting a start on the mound of dishes, Tifa watched Yuffie out of the corner of her eye, struggling to extract from her demeanor an ounce of the judgment that she knew was shallowly lurking. But the notoriously sly ninja wasn't letting anything slip.
In the end, only one conclusion came to mind to excuse her lack of a reaction. One which she didn't have the patience to reveal through a run-around inquiry.
"He still talks to you, doesn't he?"
Yuffie froze. And for a second, Tifa reveled in her detective abilities while simultaneously suppressing a burst of jealously at the idea of them being in each other's confidants once again. That is, until the target started laughing.
"Last full sentence Cloud said to me was 'we're taking 10% of your tips for every minute you're late'. And that was a voice mail," she easily admitted, more amused than offended. "Not to mention, he specifically avoids being left alone with me lately so that he doesn't have to accidentally hear even a second of my unsolicited suggestions. Whatever he's doing now, it's all him."
She spun and kicked a final stool leg across the room and into the pile by the door, perhaps to vent frustration, but most probably just to show off. "But, just for the record, I think having separate bedrooms at this stage is moronic. Not only because you two are ancient and should have long since gotten over your cooties issues, but because, and I quote, 'you lack space as it is'. Even if my sleeping arrangements weren't a current issue, what were you planning to do once Denzel hits puberty, huh? Those kids can't share a room forever."
"Okay, first of all. Denzel is and will always be a little boy, and I'll beat rush anyone who says otherwise," Tifa insisted with a pointed finger, to which Yuffie rolled her eyes and nodded in sardonic agreement. "And second of all...secondly..."
The barmaid blinked stupidly for a while, her accusatory, pointing finger slowly curling into a fist and lowering as it lost all its will to defend. She thought back to the day she had finally purchased and set up her new, larger bed. With it's freshly pressed, cotton sheets, and topped with that beautiful, hand-stitched, navy quilt they had bought together at the market; it was the cherry on top of an already luscious sundae. That night, she remembered how he seemed to purposefully linger behind at the bar with her, and the thrill she felt thinking she knew the reason why. After closing, the trip upstairs that seemed to last forever. A kiss outside her door; a deep, persistent one that gradually led to hands in each other's hair and her back pressed against a wall. And then...an abrupt end, a murmur of good night, and a closed door across the corridor.
That night still stung. In fact, every goodnight kiss since then seemed to have become shorter, more sweet than ravenous, and no less excruciating. It didn't make any sense, for they had spent nights together before on the much more limited space of his cot. She had worried for a while that maybe he was losing interest. But on the days when hope was just beginning to wear dangerously thin, always in a semi-public setting, he would make sure to prove otherwise.
Once, while she had been in the space beneath the stairs that served as a laundry room, he had ducked in behind her from the garage, closed the door and backed her up onto the running dryer. Without a second's explanation, his mouth had been on hers, hard and insistent, as if he were trying to vent days of restraint into this one, brief moment. And then, just as quickly as it began, he had torn himself away, mumbling something about an important delivery before practically running out of the room. The entire encounter had only lasted a minute or two, but it had left her trembling and flushed for a long while afterward, making it difficult to concentrate on the kids' math lessons.
She had thought then that maybe this uncharacteristic boldness was a sign that he was ready to move further. But that night was the same. A quick peck of a kiss, a bid goodnight and a far away closed door. One step forward, two steps back.
It was more than frustrating. It was the type of behavior that legitimately made people, eventually, snap. The equivalent of spending weeks on a hundred-thousand piece puzzle only to realize you were missing one. Upturning the table and burning the whole lot would be regarded as a relatively understandable reaction is such cases. And she considered herself dangerously close to an equivalently theatrical outburst.
"I need to talk to him about this, don't I?" Tifa asked in a meek voice, mindlessly hugging a dish towel to her chest as if it were a stuffed animal. How she loathed trying to force heart-to-heart conversations out of Cloud. It was like trying to manually extract teeth from a wolf with rabies; an exasperating struggle that usually ended with the instigator getting hurt and the animal escaping anyway.
"Yeah. As if he'll just sit down and explain his every action to you. We both know Cloud doesn't work like that." Yuffie clapped her hands free of any remaining dust before leaning onto the bar across from the sink, her expression oddly studious."Not that I'm butting in. Cause I promised not to butt in ever again. I just hope you remember that this is your relationship too. And if something is bothering you, he has to make an effort to resolve it. But nothing can be resolved if the problem hasn't yet been even acknowledged. That being said, you still have to tread carefully around his ridiculously delicate ego. Merely complaining that you are unhappy and insisting on change will, more often than not, have a negative effect."
"Should I be taking notes?" The suggestion was, sadly, only partly a joke. But Yuffie's subsequent giggle assured that she would never live it down if she actually pulled out a paper and pen.
"Fine, fine. I'll stop with the psycho babble. Let me just recommend this: you want Cloud in your room, then make it happen! Set up an offer he can't refuse."
"I should just...ask him what he sees as the next step? Right? Is that a compromise?"
"No. No its not. That was the exact opposite of my-" with a groan, Yuffie ran both hands through her short hair before slapping her palms on the bar. "We both know he doesn't respond well to talking. Just...you know...an offer he can't refuse," she repeated slowly, this time with raised eyebrows.
Tifa, awkwardly, also lowered her palms onto the bar, brows furrows as she considered the rather extreme suggestion.
Words are not the only way to tell someone how you feel...
Her own advice, from long ago. Who knew it would come back to bite her so many years later?
After a full minute of silence, Yuffie's expression started to lose some of its enthusiasm. "Please tell me you get it Tifa? Cause-"
"I get it Yuffie," Tifa asserted with a hand raised to interrupt. "Thanks...I guess."
"I'm just saying that you have some extra gil in your pocket today," she nodded toward the register with a devious grin. "Maybe it could be used to stage a romantic evening? Perhaps I could drive the kids up to see Barret and come back on Tuesday, just in time for your adoption interview? I do still owe you two a proper date night, after all."
Tifa nodded tiredly, still fiddling with the towel in her hands.
"Or," she began, put off by the exceptionally miserable expression on her friend's face "or I could just keep cleaning and pretend this conversation never happened. Far be it from me to pressure you into anything."
Tifa laughed then, not because it was necessarily funny, but to mask how pathetic she felt for needing such a push. Were it left completely to her and Cloud, they would probably still be in the lonely roommates stage. Still pining for one another. Both too scared of the other's potential reaction to even attempt moving forward.
She was sick of being afraid. Sick of missing out on years of happiness, complete happiness, just because of what might happen.
Life (especially their often danger-filled lives) was much too short.
"Take the kids tonight," she asked with a nod, having come to a terrifying yet exciting decision. "Please. Its Sunday, so I'll have to wait till tomorrow to order the seating replacements anyway. We made enough money that I can afford to keep the place closed for a bit so that I can...prepare. For the adoption interview. And such."
"And today," Yuffie reached over the counter to grab her friend's hand, leading her around the bar end to join her on the customer's side. "Today I make sure your bar is spit polish clean for said interview, while you go find something..." she looked Tifa waitressing outfit up and down, biting her lip and cringing for emphasis. "Just try to find something an actual female would wear. K?"
"Ha. Ha," she smacked the younger girl's arm in mock offense. "Like you're one to talk."
"Hey, the tips don't lie my friend." Yuffie then reached over and drew from beneath the bar another large bucket, this one filled with coins, half of which she dumped unceremoniously on the counter and pushed over toward Tifa. "I was four minutes late yesterday," was her concise explanation. Though the unspoken reason for relinquishing her hard earned gil was, of course, the state of the bar.
If only to teach her a lesson, Tifa accepted the coins, picking out a handful of gold ones to take with her. "Put the rest in the register please," she said with a new, musical lilt in her tone before giving her friend a quick kiss on the cheek. "And…thank you."
Yuffie grinned, giving the hand she held a tight squeeze before releasing. "You're welcome."
Smiling so wide that her cheeks were beginning to hurt, Tifa snatched her coat off its hook and headed out the door toward the market place, humming as she walked. Her mind already swamped with pleasant visions of what the night would bring, and the future it would lead to.
If only she hadn't left so quickly, perhaps she would have noticed the body sitting staircase. A man with his head in his hands, rubbing at his temples, at a loss for what to do.
Instead of blaming Yuffie, he blamed himself, having put off and ignored the problem for longer than could ever be deemed safe or fair. Sighing in frustration, Cloud ran his fingers through his blonde spikes before settling on the one and only possible option.
He had to go.
Tonight.
Barret found her in the church. Well, what was left of the church.
With the plate continually crumbling, allowing beams of sunlight to touch the slums' earth, along with the arrival of the mystical lake a few months ago, plant life seemed to have taken over the structure, turning the wall and column remnants more leafy green than stone grey.
If the place had been considered serene before, now it was absolutely heavenly.
It was almost impossible to enter and not immediately feel at harmony with Gaia and the Planet. That is, unless you came here as part of a desperate hunt, jealous of ghosts and their connections to those still alive.
She sat at the lake's edge, staring unblinking into the water, knees hugged tightly to her chest. Her feet were bare. Her eyes, red-rimmed. And the silky, blue dress she wore was dirty and damp. The same dress they had seen her in last, a whole two days previously. Right after she had fled from the bar, leaving two children and a bewildered WRO representative in her wake.
"Tifa," he began, but then stopped himself. Knowing that there was nothing he could say to help, really. Instead, he took light, deliberate footsteps toward her, giving her time to adjust to his presence. As if she were an easily startled deer.
When he eventually arrived at her side, he sat down, mimicking her exact stance, staring out into the abyss of Aerith's lake.
"He's not here," she eventually sputtered, her voice sounding dry and cracked. As if she hadn't drank or eaten for days. A startling observation that was probably dead on.
Barret nodded. "I told you he wouldn't . They aren't the point of this, whatever it is."
Tifa swallowed loudly. "I guess not..."
The thought gave her surprisingly little comfort.
They sat in silence for a while longer.
"Marlene and Denzel are worried about you," he dared to try. "You scared them."
A long sniff from Tifa as she averted her eyes, intensely ashamed of her behavior at the adoption interview. "I couldn't-I can't...Gods…I couldn't get through it alone...I can't do this alone."
"You won't have to!" the older man insisted, gently forcing her to turn her shoulders and face him. She kept her eyes downcast, silent tears streaking down her cheeks.
"Look Tifa. I-I know I haven't been around much. But it's because that's how good I know you are for Marlene. She's my baby girl. And I'd do anything to ensure her happiness. And that happiness is with you. Under you and only your care. You hear me?"
"I messed up Barret..." she choked out in a broken whisper, slowly shaking her head. "I ss-scared him away. And-and when that man from...from the WRO. He-he asked about us and...and I couldn't breathe!" A nearly inhuman cry of frustration echoed throughout the space, causing all lounging birds in the area to shriek and take flight. Tifa bent forward, leaning her cheek onto the man's expansive chest while pulling frantically at the roots of her hair. "They're going to take them away now. And-and I'll be all alone. I don't want to be alone Barret."
"That's not gonna happen. Not without a fight. We'll all fight for them. And we'll win Tifa. We always do!"
"But Cloud...I can't...not alone."
Barret had to restrain himself from growling, that name having recently become a curse among their gang.
When that idiot came back, and Barret had no doubt that he would eventually, some "words" were definitely in order. Now if only they could get Tifa to believe it as adamantly as the rest of them did.
"I'm not saying he ain't gonna get his legs broke, but if you're up to helping him heal then you will be getting him back. Spikey, he..." Barret paused to take a deep breath, unsure whether this information would help or hinder. But quickly decided that any outcome was better that this hopelessness. She certainly couldn't get any worse.
"He loves you Teef. And for whatever insane reason inspired him to go, loving you had something to do with it. And I'm willing to bet either one of my hands on that. Preferably the metal one seeing as I got, like, six back home." This extracted a chuckle/sob out of the girl; evidence that he was moving in the right direction. "He will come back. He's coming back. Just...get it through your head and this will all be over. Spikey may not be a saint, or even a decent human being in my books, but if he's anything, its honest. If he said he's coming back, he will come back. Okay? Trust us."
Tifa lay motionless against him for a long while after that, the only evidence of her being alive were the occasional sniffs and shuddering breaths. For all his years with her in AVALANCHE, Barret could never have fathomed seeing her this...fragile. It was strange. Like someone else was wearing her skin. Someone broken and unnaturally cold.
She was silent for minutes that stretched into an eternity, and Barret worried for a while that she was too far gone for any of his words to have gotten through. One phrase, however, only one, seemed to have made an impression.
"He..." she swallowed, her voice so low he could barely hear it over the trickling water. "He l...loves me? He-he told you that?"
Barret sighed. "Yeah. 'Course he did. Told me point blank to my face over a cup o hot cocoa. Then we skipped on home holding hands and, I dunno…pickin' daisies."
Though he didn't think it was possible, Tifa slunk even further against him. "A simple 'no' would have sufficed."
"Look Teef, I can just tell. We all can. He's always had this...slightly less-cranky look on his face when you're around, and he don't listen either. Gotta repeat things twice cause he's 'distracted'. It's disgusting, really. Always made me want to smash his face in. But that may just be the rage talking, editing my memories a bit." Tifa snorted, giggling pathetically against his chest.
As if the joke were a trigger, he watched as she gradually seemed solidify before his very eyes. Her clamping fingers released themselves from her hair, her limbs stopped shivering, and by the time she lifted her face up to him, she was almost the old, resilient, indestructible, bad-ass bartender he knew and loved. Almost.
Just missing a piece.
"I want to go home," she stated, voice still raspy but no longer bleak.
Barret smiled, gratefully taking her small hand into his own larger one.
"You're the boss my friend."
Author's Note: Has that ever happened to you? You start a ten-thousand piece puzzle only to discover that a stupid little wedge in the sky is missing? This chapter is dedicated to said anonymous puzzle company's quality control department that has done this to me FOUR TIMES (I'm very careful to open the box where I plan to put the thing together).
So frustrating.
A quick update to reward my awesome reviewers from last chapter :D. Thanks again for all your support. Cloud still has a few steps, final to go before becoming that man he's meant to be. I hope you look forward to discovering these steps as I do to writing them.